It is clear that growth in the exploitation of OT vulnerabilities is a direct result of the expanding attack surface resulting from digital innovation. One of the most critical tasks that most enterprise security teams struggle with on a continual basis is working to protect their organizations against new and existing OT vulnerabilities. In operational environments, you will not see a patch Tuesday on the calendar to accommodate updates due to the growing attack surface. It is nearly impossible to shut down production every time a now OT vulnerability is discovered. What do you do when patching is critical but not possible? An IPS system is designed to inspect traffic and look for and block malicious activities. And with the right OT signature, it can also be used to identify and stop attempts to exploit specific OT vulnerabilities.

Because any exploit has to take a defined network path for execution, being able to identify a specific threat makes it is possible to interrupt or block the exploit by modifying the network rules. These specific OT IPS signatures, or virtual patches or shielding, can be deployed at the network level using the intrusion prevention (IPS) functionality built into an NGFW or a traditional standalone IPS appliance. Virtual patching should be considered an integral component of every organization’s patch management strategy. It not only protects against new threats, but also provides effective coverage for other scenarios, as discussed above. Through this approach, business-critical applications and data can better be secured as a virtual patch can quickly, without interruption production, eliminate the window of opportunity and thereby minimize the risk for the business by shutting down the path to exploitation. During this webinar, we will address how organizations can reduce their exposure to OT vulnerabilities across the board and scale their responses and coverage accordingly with appropriate defenses that can be put in place within minutes or hours.